Frankie followed the bipeds with her eyes, hoo-ing with particular delight at the smaller humans who had mastered locomotion with their own two feet. A pigeon landed near us and pecked at the teething cracker my baby had flung to the ground. Around us, women with infants in strollers gossiped on Nanny Row in the shadow of the dancing bears. The breeze picked up the slightly fishy smell of the sea lions and brought it to us. Every once in a while, Frankie would look at me in wide-eyed wonder- Was I seeing all this too? It was her first time in Central Park and we had stopped to rest outside the zoo.
Before long, I realized that my baby was not watching the people anymore. Her attention focused on an older gentleman making peek-a-boo faces at her. Next to him was a woman his age; both were well-dressed and they appeared to be sharing a sandwich. I had noticed them sitting down on the bench beside us but had not thought more of it until now.
“Making friends? I smiled and bounced Frankie on my thigh. She is gregarious, curious, and a little bit fearless.
The older man smiled. “Beautiful baby. What’s her name?”
“Francine,” I responded, “An old-fashioned name.”
“Beautiful name,” he said, nodding. “How old is she?”
“Six months!” I responded proudly, because it is no small feat that we have kept her, ourselves, and our two cats, alive.
“Our son was six months old when we came to New York City for the first time. Remember? We came to the Indian Embassy,” the woman had an Irish lilt to her voice, as she nudged her husband. “That was thirty-eight years ago.” Her husband nodded. I realized then that they may once havec been an odd couple, a white Irish woman and an Indian man with a British accent. These days, most people wouldn’t bat an eye.
I smiled again politely and started to pack up our stuff with one hand while holding Frankie on my hip, then maneuvered her into the stroller. The woman offered to help, saying, “Do you need help? Though I’m sure you’re well practiced at this,” which I thought was a very gracious thing for her to say.
“Well, six months of practice so far! Haha,” I said, buckling the baby in.
“Don’t worry, you’re doing great! It goes by so fast and soon you’ll remember this baby stage and want another one. That’s how we ended up with three.” The woman chuckled. The man continued to make faces at Frankie.
“And the great thing is, they’re all best friends when they’ve grown up.”
“That… is amazing.” I said. “Well, have a good day! We have to pick up your mama,” I told Frankie to wave bye, still considering the older couple’s words as we walked away. It was a pleasant interaction, one completely unexpected and not tainted by COVID, crime, or the climate change that will kill us all. No, it was simple and straightforward, and we just wanted to talk about love and family, and …babies.
Now if only I could convince my child that sleep is a good thing. That she isn’t missing anything by taking an hour-long nap. But I concede it’s hard when sleeping 15-16 hours a day means that you’ve been sleeping for over 60% of your short life, and when there’s so much to see and so much to do and everything is new. They say babies keep you young, and, aside from using their stem cells, I think this is how. When I hand her a blade of grass or a bottle cap, she examines it as if it might be magic or I am magic, or maybe both. When I share in her joy, even things that have become commonplace in my forty years on earth become exciting again.
Which is to say, right now, everything is magic.
We walked away from that lovely couple who sat on a park bench sharing a sandwich and somehow I was filled with more hope than I’d had in years. The sun felt just right and the number of people wasn’t overwhelming; my baby was smiling and the birds were chirping and I felt that things would turn out okay.
I looked back over my shoulder. A crowd of tourists stood taking pictures of the dancing bears as the clock chimed at 1 pm. The older couple was already gone, and I don’t know if they were really there, or were they… magic?
I had two coffees today on what was our daughter’s tenth flight in seven months. She’s been to two countries and three states and she has me beat at her age. She still claims the crown of ‘good traveling baby’ and now she has the wings to prove it.
We’ll be traveling a bit more in the second half of the year. It’s extremely stressful, hot, and expensive and we are completely exhausted when we collapse back at home but for Frankie to meet all her relatives in Michigan and Toronto is totally worth it. And for her to see New York City is totally worth it. There’s magic in our everyday lives if we only dare to look.
In other news, one of my articles was published on KevinMD, and I’ll be interviewed for a short segment of the KevinMD podcast in September. An earlier version of this article was posted on Doximity and garnered a lot of comments on that website. People have also been reaching out to me on Instagram to tell me they read this story. I had old friends from medical school and residency text me out of the blue about it. What all that is telling me is that there is a lot we need to do to change academic medicine for women and for people of color. Some of the ideas include separating academic medicine from institutionalized medicine and providing grants and funding to physicians in private practice who want to pursue academic research and teaching. I think all of this is possible, we just need to change our view of what academic medicine can and should be, and not let a small group of people gatekeep academics.
Click on the link to read “I am one of those women who left academic medicine.” on KevinMD
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Until next time, always go black tie!